Carver S+

After getting a solar roof we have been looking at electric mobility solutions. But existing electrical cars seemed pretty much oversized. We do not really need a 4-seater with 650km range and two tons of total empty weight. Katja Diehl coined the german tongue-in-cheek term “Maximaleventualbedarfsauto” for it, the car that meets biggest use-case you could possibly reasonably have.

Looking around, we test drove a Carver.Earth , which was the right size, but limited to 45 km/h (and bike pathes in some areas). Then Carver started to offer the “Carver S+”.

The vehicle can be driven with an A-license or a B-license from before 2013. It has 2 seats placed one after the other, and the back seat is rather basic. It goes 80 km/h on a 7.1kWh LFP battery, which is good for circa 100 km, if you do not go 80 all of the time. It carves, which means that it leans into curves in a rather awesome way (less awesome if you set “comfort” mode, which I strongly recommend). It has no steering or brake assist, which means you get to work a bit. But at 330kg total system weight, empty, it is pretty manageable.

The car charges with a regular household plug, but a type 2 adapter is available. It will still not fast charge.

Completely filling it up to 7.1 kWh from 10% charge took 4h and the house consumed 7.1kWh during that time (but we have base load and made a coffee).

So all in all a pretty good match, and exactly what we expected. Radically less car, so exactly the right amount of car.